Eternally Yours (13 page)

He gave me such an odd, speculative look that I pretended to suddenly be fascinated with a squirrel that was leaping from branch to branch overhead.

“Through here,” he said. Another minute more and we passed between two large trees, like a gate, and were in the clearing. It was about thirty feet across, vaguely oval; scattered, rotting stumps told me it had once been tree-filled but then cleared for some purpose. To build a log cabin or something.

Reyn swung down smoothly and led his horse to a low-hanging branch. “Good boy, Geoffrey,” he murmured, and smoothed his hand down the horse’s velvety muzzle.

There was a strong possibility that my legs would just buckle under me if I tried to get down, but Reyn came over and took my hand.

“Come on,” he said, with no-nonsense written all over his face.

I got down and stifled a shriek as my muscles straightened out again. “Why did I do this? Tomorrow I won’t be able to walk.”

“It always hurts at first, but then you get used to it.” He shot me a laughing glance, and I rolled my eyes. “Let me know if you need me to rub you down.” His voice was light, but the look in his deep golden eyes was hot and full of thrilling promise. I quickly turned away, double-checking my stirrup strap so I wouldn’t drop to the ground and beg
him to take me. That kind of thing makes a girl seem easy. Especially the begging part.

When I could finally control my face, Reyn was pulling a sword from a sheath.

“Again with the sword,” I groaned.

“Yes,” he said. “Again with the sword. And look what I brought, just for you.” Reaching into his saddle pack, he pulled out a finer, thinner sword, maybe half the weight of the one I’d used last time. A girl sword. He presented it to me with a pleased look.

I took it. It was an épée, beautiful, inlaid with gold filigree. It looked quite old but had been so finely made that age hadn’t touched it. Much like myself. It fit my hand as if I’d commissioned it, instantly becoming a seamless extension of my arm. I gave it an experimental swish.

“Some guys just give flowers,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, and when whapping your bouquet against some enemy’s head doesn’t strike him down, don’t come running to me,” Reyn said. He swung his own sword into position. “En garde.”

After an hour, I was practically weak with hunger—it was well past lunch—my arms were floppy foam approximations of their former selves, and my legs would never forgive me. The next day was going to be such a bummer. The palms of my hands were already blistered, I was tired and dirty, and my lungs burned from exercise. I felt so… alive. For the first time in—I couldn’t remember when. I thought
of my amulet, whole and complete, in my hidey-hole in my room, and thought, My life is not too bad right now.

And that unfamiliar feeling lasted several more minutes, until we arrived back at River’s Edge and found total pandemonium: All the windows on the first floor had been blown out.

I
t was one of those situations where you’re glad you weren’t on the
Titanic
, because look what happened. I was glad I’d been far away in the woods, so there was no way this could be pinned on me. Unless it had been aimed at me. In which case that was bad.

Reyn took the horses while I rushed to the house. Every single window on the first floor was shattered, their tall frames gaping. Glass and wood shards littered the yard. Rachel and Daisuke were wrapping large pieces in newspaper; Charles and Anne were raking up everything around the house, the four inches of leaves making that chore so
much worse. After thinking a second, I ran and got our big rolly garbage bin. It was almost as big as me, but the wheels made it easier to push across the yard. My palms still burned from sword practice—as soon as I had a minute I would go in and slap Band-Aids all over them.

“Thanks—good thinking,” Rachel said, and started filling it.

“What in the world happened?” I asked.

“It was during the circle,” Anne said tensely, dumping a cardboard box of leaves and glass into the trash bin. She took the empty box and began to refill it. At this rate, we should have the area around the house spick and span by, like, August.

River came around the corner of the house. She looked harried and concerned but seemed relieved to see me.

“Nastasya!” She gave me a hug. “Are you all right? This whole thing happened, and no one could find you. I was worried this was part of something worse, and that you’d been hurt.”

“Oh no, I’m fine,” I stammered.

“Then we realized Reyn was gone, too,” Brynne said, trying not to smirk. She wiped sweat off her forehead with one gloved hand. I shot her a look behind River’s back, and she stifled a hint of a smile behind her worried expression.

“Reyn made me go for a ride,” I said, throwing him under the bus.

“I’m glad you’re both all right,” said River. “Get yourself a
pair of the leather work gloves so you don’t cut yourself. God’s wounds, what a mess.” She hurried off toward Reyn, who had reappeared with a snow shovel and a tarp to pile leaves on.

“God’s what?” Brynne asked.

I remembered that Brynne was only around 230 years old. “God’s wounds,” I said. “I haven’t heard that in centuries. People said it in the fifteen hundreds. All the swears were God’s teeth, God’s wounds, God’s eyes, God’s blood.
God’s wounds
became
zounds
. You’ve heard that one, right?”

“Yeah.” Brynne straightened and looked around the yard. “This is going to take forever.”

“Yeah,” I echoed. “Maybe someone could put a spell on the glass pieces and, like, make them levitate or something?”

Brynne rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

“There’s that word again,” I muttered, and she laughed.

The trash bin was almost full now. Charles came and took it, saying, “I’ll dump this down the well and bring it back.” River had an old well that had gone dry. We often dumped trash down it, then set the trash on fire. It was about half-filled.

River came back toward us, looking pretty dispirited. “We’ve got some plywood in the barn to board up some of the windows, but Daniel and Reyn are going to the hardware store to get more. I guess I need to call a window company to get all of these replaced. How am I going to explain
it?” She brushed a lock of silver hair off her forehead, leaving a faint streak of dirt.

“Science experiment gone wrong?” Brynne suggested. “Or frat party?”

“Seriously, though, what happened?” I asked.

River sighed. “We were having a circle in the front parlor. We wanted to try to find some bigger picture, see some sort of pattern of magick out in the world. It was all going fine—we were very strong, very powerful. And just as something was starting to take shape”—she frowned, as if trying to remember—“it all suddenly went weirdly, awfully awry. I couldn’t even say what it was, but we looked at one another, each of us filled with dread and confusion. I was about to suggest dismantling the circle—and then all the windows blew out, not just the parlor ones. But everything inside is fine.”

“That’s really weird.” I felt self-conscious, still feeling like I’d brought all this here.

“To put it mildly,” River said.

“Okay, do you need anything besides a ton of plywood?” Daniel asked, walking up and jingling the truck keys. Reyn was with him—he looked serious and distant, a big contrast to how he’d been on our ride and during my sword lesson.

“Who’s that?” Brynne shaded her eyes and gazed toward the driveway leading to the gravel parking area.

I looked where she pointed and saw a tall, raggedy-looking
character heading toward the house, a bag slung over his shoulder, like an old-fashioned hobo.

“Why…” River’s voice trailed off. Astonishment widened her eyes, and her mouth dropped open.

“Whoa,” said Daniel.

The tall man saw us in the side yard and headed toward us. River murmured, “What’s his name now?”

Daniel shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said quietly. “It’s been fifteen years or more since I saw him.”

Behind me, I heard Reyn’s quickly indrawn breath. His face was set in stone, his eyes narrowed. His chest rose and fell quickly as he stared at the stranger. What was that about?

River shoved her gloves at me and rushed at the man. “
Tesoro!
” she said, throwing her arms around him.

Darling?
Okay, so maybe he was another one of her lost souls, come back for a refresher. This close I could see he appeared in sore need of rehab: His clothes were tattered; he looked hungry and in need of a shower. His face was hard and tough, his eyes bleak, as if he’d seen awful things and hadn’t gotten over them. Had maybe been the cause of them. I shivered, glad that I was standing in a group of people and not meeting this guy in a dark alley at night.

The man returned her hug, but tentatively, as if his ribs hurt. Pulling back, he gave her a crooked grin, but even from twenty feet away I saw that it didn’t reach his eyes.

He held River away from him, looking at her as if to memorize her face.

“Joshua,” he told her.

“Joshua,” River repeated. “My dear. I’m so glad to see you.” She hugged him again and he put up with it, biding his time until she stopped.

“Come,
caro
,” River said, leading him toward us. He followed slowly, his eyes running over us, but then he stopped so suddenly that River jolted, his hand clasped in hers.

I followed his gaze; it ran straight to Reyn. Glancing at them, I saw they looked eerily similar, with anger flushing their cheeks, their eyes narrowed and mean, hands clenched into fists at their sides.

“So,” River said, letting out her breath in a sigh, “I take it you two know each other?”

As it turned out, Joshua was the third grumpy bear in the River’s Brothers Collection. Was she the only one who had inherited a pleasant disposition?

Our dinner table was filling up with people and yet not exactly a gathering of light and lively conversation. Talk so far had been quiet and brief:
pass the salt, how’s your cut?
, and so on. At this time of year, dinnertime was always dark, but today it seemed claustrophobic because the windows were boarded up; the large, ugly plywood panels screwed into place, chill wind seeping around their edges. Solis had lit fires in all the fireplaces downstairs because the radiators couldn’t keep up.

River, Daniel, and Ott were happy to see Joshua but also
clearly shocked. Whether it was his appearance or just the fact that he was here, I didn’t know. Also, they seemed to treat him tenderly, as if he were damaged in some way. Joshua himself looked tense and uncomfortable. He reminded me a lot of Reyn; a wild thing at heart, better suited to being outside and unconfined in any way. Sounds like a recipe for the perfect boyfriend, right? Someone who can’t settle down? God help me.

Speaking of Reyn, he and Josh hadn’t looked at each other since that first furious glance outside. They sat as far away from each other at the table as possible, and acted as if the other didn’t exist. Veerrrry interesting.

Also very interesting was watching how Brynne watched Joshua, speculation in her brown eyes. Had Daniel fallen from favor so quickly? Was Brynne that self-destructive? Even clueless me could see that Joshua was an even worse romantic prospect than Reyn was.

Halfway through the meal, River sat up straighter and said: “Reyn, you and Joshua obviously recognized each other outside. What’s the past history between you two?”

There was a tightening awareness all along the table as eyes focused on them and people quit chewing to pay attention.

Joshua said nothing, just looked at his plate and cut his meat into ever smaller pieces, like it was the liver of his enemy.

Reyn shot him a quick glance, and that alone was enough to make his face darken ominously. But all he did was shrug,
mumbling something that no one could understand. He wasn’t going to tell us anything. Gosh, guys are so fascinating and mysterious! It was
such fun
. I made a note to myself not to stand in between them—it seemed likely that they would suddenly try to kill each other for no reason. Or no reason that we knew, anyway.

“Joshua, what brings you to River’s Edge?” Brynne’s voice was calm and clear, her eyes expectant.

Joshua, startled, actually glanced at her. Of the four siblings, he looked the most different: His hair was medium brown and streaked by the sun, his face tanned and a bit weathered, where Daniel and Ottavio were both more groomed. Ottavio’s eyes were black. Daniel’s and River’s were a lighter, clear brown, like tobacco juice, but Joshua’s were tortoiseshell, marbled brown and green and blue.

Brynne waited, her gaze fixed on him.

Joshua looked around the table until he saw me. He nodded in my direction, then returned to his meal, eating deliberately as if forcing himself not to wolf it down.

Me again. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” I muttered, putting my fork down.

“Not really, no,” Reyn said with a cold cynicism. “Not quite.”

Joshua’s eyes lit with quick fury, and I held my breath because it seemed like something awful was about to happen.

River put her wineglass down hard. “There’s dried-apple pie for dessert,” she said, but she made it sound like a threat.

“I’ll help you,” said Daisuke, starting to gather plates. The weird mood was broken, or at least tamped down. But we were all left wondering what the hell was going on.

“Nastasya, wait.” I paused at the top of the stairs as River caught up with me. Her face was drawn, and she looked tired. Tired of having grouchy siblings, I bet. “Slipping upstairs? What, you don’t feel like having a fireside chat with my family?” she asked, humor lightening her lines of tension.

“Gosh, no thank you,” I said. She chuckled, then grew more serious as she reached out and smoothed my hair off my shoulder, touching the fine wool scarf looped around my neck. She nodded down the hall. “Let’s go to your room.”

In my room I sat on my bed, but it was difficult—I itched to circle restlessly, trying to outpace the jumble of thoughts careening inside my head. The arrival of yet another brother, here because of how deeply dangerous I supposedly was, had shaken me. Ottavio was bad enough, then Daniel, now Joshua.